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An urgent development on Keir Starmer’s government of “countrywide revival”: following dismissing his deputy and housing secretary due to negligence to settle required stamp duty, the prime minister has additionally dismissed the ambassador to the US because of strong ties with an identified child trafficker.

Meanwhile, an increasing group of people believe the answer lies with Andy Burnham assuming control, implying he could run in a constituency which has just recently become free because the former Labour MP was barred by Labour after being found to have sent messages wishing constituents might get dead/“run over”, and is now reportedly “off sick”.

Adding to this, the Americans are coming. President Donald Trump touches down in the UK tonight on the eve of what promises to be the most terribly unlucky dinner party since the days of the vomiting scene in a famous film. It feels impossible to believe the nation could feel any more refreshed.

Emails Involving Mandelson

Several days after Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein were revealed, and the more I’ve thought about them, the stronger I come back to one of the more obscure lines. Composing in apparent anguish just before of Epstein’s incarceration in 2008, he writes to him: “This wouldn’t happen in Britain.”

Maybe that was accurate, intentionally or not. Britain is very, very good at a kind of systemic avoiding scrutiny. Perhaps Mandelson was – knowingly or not – describing a dark trait about the nation that pious old Keir Starmer would no doubt be deeply offended to be caught up in. Except, Starmer is caught up in it – in fact, he is the very centre of it. He remains the one who looked away.

An Administration Under Fire

It’s hard not to sense there is something necrotic and defeated about a government whose head would appoint someone he was aware had been deeply connected to Epstein, who everyone by then knew was – apologies for stating the words – a child exploitation ringleader. Association with him was by then known to be such a horror show that the late Queen Elizabeth II had to sack her own son for it.

What’s worse is the PM’s horrifying disinterest even as the facts closed in, right till the very last moment, with the Prime Minister’s office hesitating for an incredibly extended period about a series of highly disqualifying emails, while Starmer fannied about supporting Mandelson at the dispatch box.

A Fall from Grace

This was the different podium to the one at which Starmer plied his holier-than-thou trade in opposition. There’s an old online rule that declares that if you tell someone off for their writing errors, you will always end up making your own howler while in the act.

Starmer spent his years in opposition telling off the Conservatives at every turn, rather than – for example – coming up with a creative and coherent plan for economic expansion. As expected, we now seem to be strapped in observing him and his government deserve a regular rebuke, as missteps and immoralities accumulate. Why does this repeatedly occurs to him, people ask?

The Mystery of Epstein

As for the financier, we know that at the time he was corresponding to him urging him to seek early release, police in the US had identified 36 girls who the “financier” had exploited. But for all the long period of dark and shocking revelations, it still feels as though we know very limited information about him.

What was his story, this mysterious Gatsby-like figure, and how did all his wealth come from?

Shortly after his death, a publication ran a fascinating story in which real investment managers expressed clear confusion over how he made his money, since none of them had ever had any dealings with him.

According to a prominent hedge-fund president, an expert, put it: “I contacted my professional traders, at their trading desks and asked if they had ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested. Not one professional trading team, primary or secondary, had ever traded with his company.”

He had said to a journalist: “There’s another guy who is similar of Madoff that no one trades with.” Or as hedgie commented: “It’s hard to make a vast fortune quietly.” And yet Epstein had made little impact at all in the investment community. It was nearly impossible to find one investor. Their general theory was that the “hedge fund” was simply a cover for a blackmail scheme.

Ghost at the Feast

Maybe most amazing, really, is the fact that Epstein will be a ghost at the feast tomorrow night for more than one guest, as Trump continues to downplay his lengthy and intimate association with precisely the type of criminal his supporters are convinced controls the world.

Epstein is a guy who really does fit the exact model of their most sinister beliefs – wealthy and influential, involved in the trafficking of minors, linked in a web of some of the most powerful people in the world. This is all the sort of stuff they’ve been discussing for years – yet who should keep appearing in the story, but their own cherished president.

Is it not intriguing how many of them currently just can’t bring themselves to believe it? Something to discuss over the first course tomorrow night at the royal residence, perhaps, as long as everyone can keep their food down.